Confidence is key to women’s empowerment, Olympian says

At Murray Bridge's first Power of Her event Olympian Amber Halliday has spoken about how women and girls can be more confident in sport and life.

Confidence is key to women’s empowerment, Olympian says
Hannah Dreckow, Julie Anderson, Juliet Haslam, Kirsty Mead, Jaylee Cooper, Katrine Hildyard, Amber Halliday, Christine Granger and Ross Waite celebrate women at Friday's Power of Her event. Photo: Liana Webster.

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The first ever regional Power of Her event has been held in Murray Bridge, celebrating the empowerment of women in sport.

The Friday event focused on how women in sports can be harnessed to drive community change through a variety of impactful voices.

One of the top factors that underpinned resilience in women’s sport was confidence, Olympic rower Amber Halliday said at the event.

Though she had won world championships and set world records, she admitted that her own confidence had not always been high.

"My confidence is up and down ... and when it’s there it’s quiet but I know how powerful it can be," she said.

When she moved from Murray Bridge to Adelaide, she soon discovered she was "hopeless at sport".

In year seven her friend dragged her along to a sport called rowing and she immediately fell in love.

After rising to the level of winning world championships, and competing at an Olympic level in 2004 and 2008, she then found cycling, which of course she was successful at, too.

In Australia, women are under-represented in organised sport — as participants, coaches, officials, administrators, and board members — when compared to their male cohort. 

Unfortunately, during a cycling race, Ms Halliday suffered a severe traumatic brain injury after colliding with another cyclist.

She was in an induced coma for three days, intensive care for a week and had post-traumatic amnesia for a month.

"I had gone from a world champion elite athlete to absolutely starting from scratch," she said.

Amber Halliday uses self efficacy to build confidence. Photo: Liana Webster.

"So how can we build the confidence to be resilient, to perform and to be happy ... in sport and in life?"

Ms Halliday said self efficacy – basically a fancy term for confidence in your own capability – was one of the first and most important steps.

"To me self efficacy is like evidence-based self esteem ... it's feeling good about me because of what I can do," she said.

So how can women and girls build and practice self efficacy?

  • Have a goal, breaking it down into steps and celebrating each step
  • Be strategic: don't set extremely difficult and unrealistic goals
  • Be inspired by others
  • Look for evidence of your capabilities – there is always some there

"Women and girls, we should dream, imagine and visualise ourselves being effective or successful in any situation," she said.

Parents and coaches could help by trusting their daughters as athletes and checking their bias.

"Trust their capabilities," she said.

"Trust builds confidence and a lack of trust undermines it.

"I often wonder how (much) better I could've been if my coach trusted me."

Jaylee Cooper with the events question panel, Holly Bailey, Christine Granger and Ross Waite. Photo: Liana Webster

Other key speakers on the day included:

  • Kirsty Mead from the Embrace Collective program
  • Eloise Hall, co-founder and managing director of Taboo Period Products
  • Julie Anderson, women's sport lead with Sport SA
  • Jaylee Cooper from Catherine House
  • State Recreation, Sport and Racing Minister Katrine Hildyard
  • A panel which included Ross Waite, director of Raiise; Christine Granger, CEO of Proud 2 Play; and Holly Bailey, founder of the Play like a Girl program

Ms Anderson said we must recognise and celebrate positive changes in women's sport while also acknowledging some of the setbacks as well.

"If we are to move beyond the potential of systemic equality we must be grounded in how far we have to go," she said.

The Power of Her event was presented by the Integrated Murraylands Physical Activity Committee and the Murray Bridge council with support from the state Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing.

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